ICANN (the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) is getting ready to vote later this week to open up the TLD's to allow more options.

This thursday ICANN will vote on a proposal to allow for the purchase of new generic TLD's so that companies or organisations ( or even well off individuals) colud add their desired name to their domain, instead of having to have a TLD like .com, .org, .net, .net.nz, .co.nz etc,

organisations could further customise it so for instance if Mauricio felt inclined he could buy one so that Geekzone could be

www.geekzone.geekzone

or google could become www.google.google

ok, so those names aren't particularly creative, but others would be things such as

maybe the distro's would get together and buy ".nux" or even ".linux"

so there would be www.ubuntu.linux

Unfortunately this isn't as great as it sounds for the average joe - and fortunately the average spammer (or a "High volume Email Deployer" see Freitasm's entry here)

as many Experts predict it could be in the region of $50,000 USD to register a new TLD - which as mentioned, is likely to deter a majority of Cybersquatters.

But as always (and in many ways its probably the best) ICANN would give priority to companies and Organisations with Trademarked names.

Whilst many of you may think this is only being suggested because, well its a good idea, there is a much more important concern.

ICANN predictions that were released in October last year stated that of the original 4 Billion IPv4 addresses remaining, there were only 17 percent left, So many worried that with increasing scarcity of IP addresses many believe it is inevitable that they will become more valuable.(there is a lot more information in the "IPv6 - The Internet's vital Expansion" factsheet PDF versionGoogle's read as html version )

As IPv6 is still very slow on the Uptake, this is a particularly good stop-gap measure especially as current predictions are that we'll run out of IP addresses within five years!

This of course would increase the expansion and add to the already large number of "valuable" domains, creating further "real estate" on the web, which I don't think has a downside.

In the current proposal, it would allow for ~almost~ any extension that is 64 characters or less could be used (One can imagine that an assortment of taboo and offensive words in various languages wouldn't be allowed, but then who knows?).

My bet is that the first TLD to be purchased if the vote passes will be .XXX -which I'd find delightfully ironic considering ICANN rejected the application for the .xxx domain back in 2007.

inane's profile

Wellington
New Zealand

I'm a professional Geek, and also in my own time, I am likely to write about all manner of things on this blog.Of late I haven't updated this place much, but I need to do some revamping and dust off the cobwebs a bit. so thats what I'll do. going to aim for a minimum of three times a week updated here to begin, then perhaps head towards every day!

Who knows!

but for now I hope you enjoy what you read, and that I aid the constant novelty and stimulus to your brain that the internet provides us all, in a way nothing else can!

I am likely to comment on everything here, but my current topics of choice are

You Tube !

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